The Idle Day Terror Affair
by Uncle Charlie
Summary: Christmas Eve and nothing is supposed to be stirring, except there's an intruder loose in UNCLE HQ. Merry Christmas from Uncle Charlie


It is claimed that New York City never sleeps, but there are some occasions where it comes very close. Christmas Eve is one such moment. After everyone has found their way to their respective parties, the streets become quiet, almost peaceful. Still, there are those who have to work.

A lone taxi pulled up in front of a dimly lit tailor shop, allowing two men to disembark. The tallest of the pair led the way, pausing to pay the driver as he climbed out. Not waiting for the second man, who was slowing emerging from the cab, the first kicked a path through the accumulating snow towards the shop, unconcerned about the man who followed him.

"Good evening, Del, or should I say Merry Christmas," the taller man, Napoleon Solo, flashed a genuinely affectionate smile at the tailor. "I see they've managed to keep you working tonight, of all nights."

"What's the use? I go home and have my wife for company. All she does is complain about money. I'll press pants instead. We have a VIP coming in from France tonight and Mr. Waverly wants everything to be perfect. Besides, I'm Jewish." The Italian glanced over Solo's shoulder at the slender blond who was just now entering the shop. "I don't think I would use that word to describe Illya right now. What happened?"

"We went out last night to celebrate the end of a particularly bad assignment we've been hassling with the last couple of months and I'm afraid he had a bit too much holiday cheer."

"I didn't honestly think you could get properly drunk on egg nog," Illya muttered, leaning against the door stoop for support.

"Ah, frivolous youth," Solo said, shaking his head. He led the way into the fitting booth and the bogus wall that separated this shop from the reception area of U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.

The receptionist glanced up as they entered and smiled, reaching for their badges.

"Merry Christmas to you, Miss Pierce," Solo murmured, enjoying the touch of her perfumed hand as it pinned on his security badge.

"Welcome home, the two of you," she responded, repeating the procedure with Kuryakin, but allowing her hand to linger just a fraction of a second longer. If the Russian noticed, he gave no outward sign... "I have some messages for you."

She reached down onto her desk and began to shuffle through the unmarked sheets. She pushed a pile towards each man. "In addition, Napoleon, you received calls and invitations from Janice, Margot, Jenny, Pam, Denise, Helen…"

"Must be Santa's little elves," Illya muttered, scanning through his own messages.

"Lawson, Lawson and Hatch, attorneys at law."

"And it sounds like one of your elves has a present for old Saint Nick," Illya said, grinning at Solo's pained expression.

"And, lastly, Natalia."

"Hey!" Illya's amusement vanished and he frowned accusingly at the dark-haired man.

"Opps, sorry," the secretary amended. "That one's yours, Illya."

"That's better." Illya resumed his reading as a phone rang, demanding the woman's attention. Solo motioned with his head and began to walk away.

"Yes, sir?" The woman held up a finger for them to wait. "They've just arrived. Yes, sir, I understand, immediately, sir." She cradled the receiver and shrugged her shoulders. "Just when you thought you could sneak in undetected."

"You'd think we worked for some kind of spy organization or something. We're on our way..," Solo started toward a bank of elevators.

"To your office," she finished. "Mr. Waverly wants your report on file before the French detective shows up."

"Almost forgot about him. Illya, shall we?" Solo headed for the elevator and Illya obediently followed after him.

"Lead on, McDuff." He waited for the doors to shut before venturing. "Napoleon, just what French detective are we referring to?"

Solo opened his mouth tentatively, then shut it and thought furiously for a moment. Finally, he sighed and shook his head. "I don't know."

Illya fought down a wave of nausea and continued his search through his desk drawers. He shut the bottom one with too much force, sloshing his coffee over onto his stained blotter and desk top. Swearing, he piled a stack of paper onto the spill and resumed his hunting.

"Napoleon," he ventured at last. "Have you seen the white out?"

"Look in the file cabinet." Solo gestured over his shoulder, bent upon his own task of trying to remedy a jammed pencil sharpener. "A top secret organization and we use a sharpener that has seen its better days fifty years ago!"

"Talk to supply. They're the gods around here. The rest of us have to bow to them. Perhaps, they'll smile kindly upon you. I heard that last week they were even giving out honest-to-god lined tablets. Maybe the next thing that will appear upon our desks would be computers."

"Must be the Christmas spirit has gotten them."

"Why don't you take a trip down there and see? And ask them for some white out while you're at it." Illya surrendered from the futility of his search and sunk into his chair.

"What do you need white out for? I can't believe that you'd make a mistake in filling out a report. Besides, supply is closed."

"Trust me." Solo promised, shaking the sharpener. He tossed it into the waste basket and patted a wayward lock of hair back into place. "Illya, old man, you wouldn't happen to have a pen I could borrow, would you?"

"I do if you can find those receipts from that hotel in Venice."

"Umm, before or after we blew up the front desk and part of the lobby?"

Del Floria looked up as his door opened, frowning at the grotesquely costumed man that entered. Floria pushed his glasses up, scrutinizing the figure that, in the great tradition of all hunchbacks every where, hobbled up to him.

"I'd like to see Mr. Wauverly, doncha know?"

"Wauverly? You mean, Waverly?"

"Yes, I know what I mean, you fool." The man spun, blundering against a television set as he did. The monitoring device for the shop wobbled precariously before toppling over backwards and off the counter.

"The monitor," Floria yelled, scrambling to rescue the instrument a second before his phone started ringing.

"Let that be a lesson to you, my doddering friend. Never waste time watching the television set when you should be working."

Floria forgot his jangling phone, along with the defunct set on the floor as his Italian temper flared. He was almost ready to leap over the counter and attack the man when a pair of Section 2 men burst from the fitting booth. Alerted by the receptionist, they held their guns at the ready, prepared to do battle with whatever foe had penetrated the checkpoint. Confused, they braked to a stop at the sight of the hunchback before them, who batted at the air before him with short karate chops.

Floria waved their guns down and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Will you please show this...gentleman to Mr. Waverly's office? He's our French cousin. Oh, and can you have repair bring me a new monitor?"

Obligingly, each man took an elbow and propelled the Frenchman towards the small booth.

"Now, just a…just a moment, do you know who I am?" He shook away their hands, falling back against the wall. It swung open automatically, pulling the man inside without his guards. The tail of his coat was swept up in a brief draft and, as the door shut, it took the material with it, effectively jamming the delicate triggering mechanism, leaving the guards behind in the tailor shop.

The receptionist stared, open-mouthed, at the sight before her, while the hunchback fought a brave, but useless battle against the wall.

Abruptly, the coat hem tore and the man fell backwards, landing with no little force upon the desk, scattering the badges over the floor.

"Oh no!" She stooped to gather them just as did the man, their heads meeting with an audible crack.

"Oh my goodness," the man cried, reaching out to steady the dazed woman, but he over-balanced and fell into her, sending her to the same fate as the badges, and she laid there, unconscious from the blow.

The man considered her for a moment, and then, rather self-consciously, he stuffed the scattered badges into the spacious pockets of his trench coat and left to wander down the hall.

With his pounding head for company, Illya Kuryakin made his way down into the bowels of the secretarial pool and the only copier machine, or rather, the only one that would be working this late at night. Another couple of hours and it would be Christmas. Maybe if he could get this report on Waverly's desk and make it through the meeting with this French guy, he'd be allowed the privilege of catching up on his sleep. He rounded the corner, so involved with his thoughts that he came up on the operating machine and woman before he was aware of them.

"Oh, Mr. Kuryakin!" She jumped as much as he did; her face stained a crimson red of embarrassment. "You startled me!"

"Me, too," Illya admitted. "What are you doing here so late?" He took a step as she moved to cover a venerable sheet, but not quickly enough to hide a revealing title to Illya. "You're copying a recipe book? Wouldn't it be easier to do that during the day than sneaking down here in the middle of the night, Miss Sundrey?"

"They're really strict about using the machine for personal business during company time, sir."

"I thought it was always company time around this place," Illya mumbled, setting down the folder he carried.

She was about to explain further when a bright flash of red went off and a claxton of alarms sounded. Acting on instinct, Illya pulled his Walther P-38 free of its holster and leapt for the door, but it slammed shut, locking, as did all doors in case of an intruder alert.

"Damn it!" Illya slapped a palm against the door, and then sighed, long and heavy. Turning back to the woman, he half-smiled and gestured to the machine. "You might as well finish up. We're going to be here for the duration." He then noticed the woman staring at his weapon and he holstered it. "Reflex. Sorry."

"You Section 2 guys always scare me."

"Sometimes we scare ourselves."

Napoleon Solo snapped a finger in sudden thought and hooked a hand over his shoulder. "The copier room down in secretarial; I'll bet that's where he is." He started off for there, shouting back to his men. "And find this gentleman and get him to Waverly's office before something else happens." It took him just minutes for him to make his way down from his office to the third floor. No matter that it seemed like hours as he fought locked doors the entire way down. When the intruder alert took the building down, it always seemed to take forever to get everything reopened.

Solo released the jamming signal on the door and it slid back. His mouth dropped open as a woman hurriedly walked out, clutching a book and a stack of papers to her chest.

"Good evening, Mr. Solo. Merry Christmas," she mumbled, her eyes straight ahead, her cheeks stained a bright red. To say she took off at a dead run would be an over statement, but her pace was just short of that.

"Merry Christmas, Miss Sundrey." Solo looked after her for a moment, turning his attention back to the room as Illya stepped into view, a slight smile playing on his lips.

"Hello, Napoleon, you certainly took your time getting here, thank you. I'll have to remember to use this copy machine more often." He readjusted his tie and picked up a stack of paper, each neatly separated from the other crossway. Still smiling, Kuryakin left Solo as he curiously peered into the room, just in case any other secretaries might wander out.

Kuryakin carefully balanced the paper as he made his way back to his office. So that he could keep it all together, he kept his attention focused upon it, letting himself pick out the way back to his office by sheer rote memory. Thus, he didn't see the man until they ran into one another. The impact sent paper in all directions and Illya sat down with a grunt.

"Pardon me, I'm so sorry. I am looking for a 'himp'," a voice said. Illya grimaced at the strangely outfitted man before him, various colored badges falling from his pockets. But before Illya could make further inquiry, the man wandered through a door, setting alarms into a screeching awareness of his passing.

Solo came running up to Kuryakin, who was slowly climbing to his feet. "Did you see him, Illya?"

"See who," Illya asked, genuinely confused. "All I saw was a man wearing something out of Hugo's 'Hunchback of Notre Dame' and looking for a 'himp'." He gathered the hopelessly shuffled paper into a pile and then stopped. "Napoleon, I've been speaking English for a long time now, but I'm confused. What's a 'himp'?

Illya dropped the last collated report onto his desk and sighed, permitting himself the luxury of feeling truly lousy. Now if he could just get some aspirin, he might make it through the meeting. His phone rang, jangling against the raw edge of his nerves. He caught it before the second ring, murmuring, "Kuryakin." He listened for a moment. "Yes, sir, I'll be right there."

He cradled the phone and reached for his coat jacket, all in one movement, wincing at the pull in his back. That collision had caused an old injury to kick in and the Russian felt as if he'd been beaten in the kidneys. He was definitely paying medical a visit after this. He was heading for the hall just as Solo was entering. "Our French guest has arrived and Mr. Waverly is demanding an audience," the Russian told Solo as he grabbed his partner's elbow.

"With that maniac still running around? Tonight has not been a good day." Solo wearily followed Kuryakin to the elevators before either of them realized the elevators would immediately shut down in an emergency. He pointed to the stairs and the Russian inwardly groaned. The things they neglected to mention to you at Survival School.

"You know what they say about idle hands," Illya mumbled as they started their ascent. Thankfully, Waverly's office was only two floors above theirs. Even then, Illya's back felt as if it were on fire by the time they made the landing.

"Devil's playground, you mean, or it making you blind?" Solo studied his partner for a long moment. "Illya, are you okay?"

"Pulled a muscle earlier in the evening…"

"In the copy room?"

"When our intruder collided with me. I can't believe that one man can manage to evade two dozen top section 2 agents. It's just insane. Do you suppose he's THRUSH?"

Waverly glanced up as they entered, gesturing to both chairs and his guest. "Gentleman, I would like you to meet the Inspector Clouseau of the French Surete."

"Chief Inspector," corrected the man whom Solo and Illya both immediate recognized as their lunatic intruder. The pair exchanged mutually helpless looks and tiredly sunk into their seats. Something in the air told them it was going to be a very long night.

T.H.E. E.N.D.


End file.
